Best free/cheap/easy software to edit files

Software / Firmware General
1

I have an SVG file i bought off etsy to make a back lit sign for my gate…

A6C69C2D-8C3E-4A3A-8D52-2EC52AA18B85_1_105_c
A6C69C2D-8C3E-4A3A-8D52-2EC52AA18B85_1_105_c1024×769 230 KB

Well now a friend of mine wants me to make him one to use on his property next year. Im really wanting to make life easier for my self and learn how to edit these files and add a grove to put the LEDs in and also another grove for my stand offs. Im just using a 3/4" x 3/4" block of wood at various lengths as the standoffs. On mine i had to put in all the standoffs then try like hell to mark where they were so i knew how to route the lights around them and trying to mark things with only a 3/4" gap was a royal pain. What im hoping i can do is cut the sign upside down and have it also mill in a grove for the LEDs and a spot for the standoffs. then also take and put my backer board on the machine and have it mill out the spot for the standoffs and drill 2 small holes to screw them on. But im at a loss on how to do it. Ive tried learning/using Inkscape for it but its proving harder than i think it should be. i have used Fusion360 before but its been so long that ive lost all the knowledge i had. plus as a hobbiest you cant export as DXF anymore and i really would like it to be sized correctly and all before hand. If either of those are the best for it then i dont have a problem putting in the effort to learn them more/again but i dont want to waste a bunch of time doing it for the program to not be able to do what im wanting at the end. Hopefully how i have explained this makes sense. My ADHD brain doesn’t always get what im thinking out correctly for others to understand lol. Thanks in advance for any and all help!!!

2

The free version of fusion still supports export as dxf. Just right click your sketch and it’s there.
Then import into estlcam.

I really like the sketch feature in 360 as it is intuitive to my brain… more normal peoples opinions may differ.

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Fusion 360 can easily make the changes you want. And, and as Michael says, DXF export of sketches is still supported. You cannot save the whole fusion project as DXF, but you don’t need that.

One gotcha when working with Fusion 360 and SVG files. The SVG graphics come in locked. You will see that the lines are green. You are likely going to want to do operations on them (like scaling), so you need to select all the SVG lines and unlock them. Sometimes, for some unknown reason, I have to unlock twice in order for the lines to be unlocked. You want the lines to be blue.

1 Like
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Ahh ok thank you both! i will definitely check that out! I used to be pretty good with Fusion but i stepped away for too long but hopefully it wont take me long to get back fluent with it. Thank you both again!